Archive for August 8th, 2008
Friday, August 8th, 2008
by Paul Miller, posted Aug 8th 2008 at 3:07PM
Ad Astra’s VASIMR plasma rocket is about ready for testing, only problem is it requires the vacuum of space to do it in. NASA is now considering taking the rocket up to the International Space Station, clipping it on and firing her up — perhaps even using it to reposition the station. Formerly of NASA, Franklin Chang Diaz left to form Ad Astra and perfect his plasma rocket, which he hopes will be able to take space vehicles from low-earth orbit to the moon. The rocket draws its own power from solar cells, and then uses radio waves to heat argon into plasma, and directs that plasma using magnets. (Read the full post about ‘NASA might bring plasma rocket to ISS for testing’…)
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Friday, August 8th, 2008
by Darren Murph, posted Aug 8th 2008 at 7:20PM There’s no denying that HTC’s Advantage X7510 fills a narrowing niche — after all, how many of these things have you seen out and about in the subway / underground? Still, there’s just something very enticing about a 5-inch VGA display, built-in GPS, HSDPA, WiFi, Bluetooth and a full-blown QWERTY keyboard, is there not? For you folks who plunked down quite a few bills in order to bring this home, how has your experience been? For you folks in America who have just recently decided to bite the bullet and jump in, was it worth it? How would you tweak this do-it-all conglomerate (besides making it way more affordable)? (Read the full post about ‘How would you change HTC’s Advantage X7510?’…)
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Friday, August 8th, 2008
No joke, you can vote for 2008’s best public restroom and help crown the King of all Thrones. The nominees are in, and the swank 21C Museum Hotel tops the list. Since it opened in Louisville, Kentucky, the hotel has grabbed the media’s attention with its innovative concept: a 91-room hotel dedicated to world-class luxury and contemporary art from living artists, exhibited throughout its galleries and public space. Read full article by The Informed Traveler. See Popgadget’s most popular toilet post. Tags: mobiles, amps, digital, AAC (Read the full post about ‘America’s Best Restroom: 21C Museum Hotel, Louisville, Kentucky?’…)
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Friday, August 8th, 2008
Want to play like a pro gamer? Then you have to have the right gear. We already told you about the realistic X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty sound card; this is what you need next. The brand-new Creative Digital Wireless Gaming Headset HS-1200 ($99) is an X-Fi powered headset but uses a 2.4GHz radio frequency. With the advanced 2.4GHz technology, multiple wireless headsets can operate at the same time while supporting both audio and voice streaming simultaneously. The powerful 40mm Neodymium drivers deliver realistic in-game audio and life-like vocals so you don’t miss any gaming cues, and the noise-canceling microphone is capable of blocking out ambient background noise to capture your voice only. Get up tp 8 hours with each charge; compatible for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) applications (so you can use with Skype.) For an interactive demo, click here. (Read the full post about ‘Digital Gaming Headset from Creative’…)
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Friday, August 8th, 2008
This is where we call out by names the actions and companies that seem odd, out of touch or just plain straight up smokin crack. Technology is an odd realm where PR speak doesn’t hold a lot of water if the 1s and 0s don’t line up. This week sees posturing, positioning and flat out insanity. Here is what caught my eye this week: movie-edition phones So everyone is all excited about the Bat Phone are they? I don’t get it, I mean sure, I am still rolling with my Gigli themed movie phone. OK, I am not. And neither should you. I’ve got the attention span of a fruit fly so these phones just don’t make sense. I can pretty much safely say that getting one of these won’t make you more attractive, hip or wealthy. In my opinion, each of those facets take a hit. (Read the full post about ‘This week’s Gadgetell’s “Who’s on Crack” game’…)
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Friday, August 8th, 2008
Summer’s the time to spend as much waking hours as possible outdoors, and what better way than to do it in style with the Hov Pod? The New Hov Pod SPX hovercraft design is unique; Hov Pods are far stronger, more buoyant than glass fibre hovercraft models; very rugged and strong so suitable for commercial, patrol and rescue hovercraft use. New tooling and manufacturing processes have been necessary to keep up with growing demand for the Hov Pod; we now probably ship more small hovercraft than any other supplier; drive one and discover why. Customers literally get blown away by the Hov Pod! Great for family outings, hunting and fishing trips - experience the unique sensation of traveling on a cushion of air, over any (Read the full post about ‘Hov Pod for outdoor fun’…)
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Friday, August 8th, 2008
by Donald Melanson, posted Aug 8th 2008 at 1:12PM It looks like the Artificial Life XI conference hosted by the University of Southampton was home to a unsettling number of swarm robots this week, including some we’ve seen and some we haven’t. Among the more interesting of the lot are the matchbox-size bots (pictured above) developed by a group of researchers from the host university, which apparently cost just £24 (or $46) each to produce and are able to independently divide up tasks with no central program controlling them. (Read the full post about ‘Swarm robots invade UK conference, lets hope they’re all accounted for’…)
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Friday, August 8th, 2008
Not even a month ago, Pioneer had announced that they had developed a 16 layer disk with 400 gigabytes of data storage. Totally amazing, right? Well, apparently those engineers at Pioneer don’t like to sit on their haunches, because they’ve just announced the development of a 500GB disk that includes extra encoding layers (I’ve read it has anywhere from four to nine extra). I’m not even sure what I’d DO with all that space on one disk. Although details haven’t really been given about the development of the new disk, we can probably logically theorize that they followed the same process as it’s predecessor. With the 400GB disk, data transmission issues were minimized by lowering the amount of crosstalk and hiking high-precision signal transmissions from each respective layer. (Read the full post about ‘Pioneer takes the leap to a 500GB disc’…)
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Friday, August 8th, 2008
Facebook recently came under attack by hackers who are posting malicious links on the Wall section of user profiles. The links urge the user to click on them to view a video hosted by Google, but in reality the link takes them to a compromised page with another link that claims to be an update for Adobe Flash. If clicked it downloads a Trojan called Troj/Dloadr-BPL. Once installed it downloads additional malware onto the infected computer.
The malicious message is made to look like it came from one of the members on the user’s list of friends. It’s likely that many people have already fallen for the hacker’s fake link and had their Facebook account hijacked as a result.
(Read the full post about ‘Facebook hit with malware attack’…)
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Friday, August 8th, 2008
FROM APPLETELL - The iphone (and presumably the ipod Touch) has a process by which it can check for and disable unauthorized programs. MORE » Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! - Subscribe to our feed → Tags: M4A, mobile devices, AAC, digital (Read the full post about ‘iPhone phone home? Can Apple kill your apps?’…)
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